The agenda for tonight’s Menifee City Council meeting includes the discussion of a moratorium on future apartment construction in the city.

Councilman Wally Edgerton, a strident critic of high-density development, is behind the moratorium and a plan to establish a minimum lot size of 15,000-square feet.

Tonight’s agenda calls for discussion and consideration — and possible adoption of urgency ordinances to institute an apartment moratorium and a miniumum lot-size requirement in Menifee.

Edgerton says that’s not happening.

“It’s clear there isn’t going to be any moratorium passed at the next meeting,” Edgerton said.

Because the apartment moratorium is agendized as an urgency ordinance, it would require a four-fifths vote. Edgerton concedes he does not have those four votes.

But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some spirited debate when the matter again goes before the council and the public.

Menifee’s City Council meets 7 p.m. tonight at City Hall, 29714 Haun Road.

At the last City Council meeting on Aug. 6, the apartment moratorium and minimum lot-size discussion incited passions and inspired a dozen public-commenters.

One of the dust-ups stirred by the debate focused on an email Edgerton sent out the night before the meeting. He said it was to notify interested parties of the impending discussion.

One of the names on the mailing list was a lawyer who is scheduled to be interviewed during the bidding process for City Attorney services. Edgerton admitted that was a mistake he suggested was triggered by the email software’s auto-spell function.

“That was inadvertent,” said Edgerton.

Ultimately on Aug. 6, the council voted 3-2 to approve a motion directing city staff to provide the necessary work to set a minimum lot size for all future residential developments and establish the apartment moratorium. Estimates on the unentitled land remaining in the city are between 11 and 15 percent.

Edgerton and councilmen Greg August and Tom Fuhrman supported the motion. Mayor Scott Mann and Councilman John Denver voted against it.

“He (Edgerton) completely and utterly played politics over policy with this issue,” said Mann.

Mann contends that to get these proposals instituted would require general plan amendments to the land use map and housing element, hearings by the Planning Commission and City Council, with the required notification periods, and more.

City Manager Rob Johnson said these changes would also require California Environmental Quality Act review and the new housing element would have to pass muster with the Department of Housing and Community Development. Johnson said the city should also do an economic development study.

“I’d have to believe that we’re looking at a 12- to 18-month process just to get something back to the council,” said Johnson.

Johnson said that if the urgency ordinance fails, he believes a substitute motion could be made, possibly directing the city staff to study the effects of the proposed changes.

Edgerton rejects claims that he’s playing politics with the issue, asserting that it doesn’t bother him that it may take a year or longer for the development restrictions be adopted.

“The fact that it takes a long time, that’s part of my point, we have never been concerned about the future of the city,” said Edgerton.

“It’s all about what’s now. I’m trying to put something in place that’s helpful down the line. So the kids growing up now will have a vibrant place to live.”

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